His work is mostly satanistic and has a slightly pornographic tint. The female figures, who personify seduction and Evil, are usually modeled on the Flemish girls that Rops was so fond of. Rops lived in a time when the ecclesiastical beliefs and dogmas were severely 'under attack' by the emerging rationalism. At a young age, Rops attended a Jesuit school. Early on he made satirical prints in which he exposed the (in his eyes) hypocrisy of the church. He published prints like this in the magazine Uylenspiegel, for example, which he published in-house with inherited money when he was studying in Brussels. He spent the rest of his life mainly in Wallonia (including in the Colonie d'Anseremme) and France. He was friends with Armand Rassenfosse. In later life, Rops maintained close contacts with Symbolist poets. He illustrated several publications, for example: Les épaves, a selection from Baudelaires Les Fleurs du mal. He cherished his unfamiliarity and did not want to be famous among the mass of supposedly decent and honest people, which he looked down upon and disgusted with.